


Grievous Injury

by Vadianna



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Body Modification, Cybernetics, Depression, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, So much angst, Suicidal Thoughts, no sexy cyborg moments, post-TFA, the sex is all in memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 18:12:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7902709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vadianna/pseuds/Vadianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Starkiller Base collapsed, Ren and Hux didn't make it out in one piece, Ren moreso than Hux.  But because of his important work with the Force, Snoke demands that drastic measures be taken to preserve Ren's life.  Ren tries to reconcile himself to the changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grievous Injury

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Смертельная рана](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14038023) by [Lenuchka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenuchka/pseuds/Lenuchka)



> Please mind the tags, this is a very dark fic.

Kylo opens his eyes.  He's in a med-bay.  The room is dark, save for the light shining directly into his face.  There are five doctors leaning over him.  The pain is explosive.  He has no thoughts before passing out again.  
  
Kylo opens his eyes.  He's in a bacta tank.  Through the clear side, he can see the med-bay on the _Finalizer_.  He hurts, and he isn't breathing.  There are three doctors staring at him.  They look alarmed when they realize he's awake.  One doctor walks to the side of the tank.  Kylo is being broken and remade and he can't reach out with the Force or remember what happened because it hurts and he can't breathe.  He closes his eyes.  
  
Kylo's vision clears.  He's in bacta again, in a room he doesn't recognize.  He's by himself.  He can't feel anything.  He tries to remember how he got in the bacta.  His mind is muddled.  He can't use the Force.  Too many drugs.  They know better than to dull his senses like this.  Kylo hates drugs.  He tries to push himself out of the bacta tank, which he also hates.  He's only been injured enough for it twice.  Something bad must have happened, but when he tries to reach back with his mind, he gets woozy.  Which is okay.  There's nothing to be done inside a bacta tank.  He succumbs to fatigue and sleep.  
  
He wakes up.  He's staring at a ceiling in a room he doesn't recognize.  It's dark.  He's by himself.  He tries to speak, but there's something wrong.  He reaches for thoughts, memory, but there's nothing.  He can't feel anything.  Alarms start to go off.  He feels bad.  He lets his thoughts slip away again.  
  
When Kylo wakes again, he's staring at the same ceiling.  The lights are dim.  He tries to lick his lips, open his mouth, exhale.  Something's wrong, because none of that feels right.  He tries to reach up, to see if there's something on his face, but he feels numb, and something's not working right.  Something bad happened, but he can't remember what.  He only remembers waking up, again and again, and he wants to stay awake this time, to try and remember.  Maybe he's been drugged?  That's probably why he doesn't feel right. 

He turns his head, which he can do, and sees Hux slumped at his bedside.  Kylo sighs, and that feels alright.  He tries to reach out for Hux.  Can't.  Hux is in his uniform, in his hat, arms crossed across his chest, wearing his coat, but it's too dark to see his face.  Maybe he's sleeping.  Kylo doesn't want to wake Hux, but he's also afraid he's going to go back to sleep, and something is wrong.  If Hux is next to his bed, sleeping, something bad must have happened.  
  
Kylo tries to speak, tries to reach for Hux, to sit up, but nothing happens.  There's no pain, no feeling, and he begins to get frustrated when the only reaction he can muster is his eyes blurring with tears.  How useless.  Too many painkillers, probably.  An alarm begins to go off, and Hux raises his head, looks at Kylo.  Hux's face is still shadowed by his hat, but he can see the dim light reflected in one of Hux's eyes.  Hux studies him silently for a moment, then stands and walks away from the side of the bed.  Kylo tries to follow him with his gaze, but can't muster enough strength to turn his head again.    
  
The alarm silences, and Hux walks back into his field of vision, sits down, leans closer to Kylo.  There's something wrong with Hux's face, but it's dark, and Kylo can't seem to blink the tears out of his eyes.  He tries to roll his head to clear his vision, but can't.  
  
"The monitors say you're awake.  It's been awhile."  Hux leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest.  "I told them I wanted to talk to you for a bit, before they did the next part.  I didn't want... I didn't want you to wake up.  Before I talked to you.  They..."  Hux stops abruptly and turns his head.  "I'm not even sure that you can hear me right now.  They tell me you can hear, but you may not be able to remember.  Certain things.  Or this.  They won't let me do this again, though."    
  
Hux sounds broken, angry.  Kylo tries to reach out to him again, and can't.  He begins to panic, his sluggish thought process sharpening.  Why wouldn't Hux be allowed to talk to him?  What has happened?  He reaches desperately, trying to remember.  But there's nothing, a yawning gap in his mind where memories should be.  He remembers Starkiller being completed, that they had found the location of the Resistance base, and that the Supreme Leader had ordered an example to be made of the Hosnian system.  He remembers darkness on the snow of the planet.  That meant that Hux had armed the weapon, didn't it?  Or had they moved?  Had it been night?  
  
There are other things missing.  His eyes blur again when he can't remember, and can't move, and can't blink.  The alarms go off, louder this time, and Hux stands again to silence them, quickly this time.  
  
"If you do that again, they'll come in and put you under, and I won't be able to talk to you.  But I suppose the alarms are a good thing.  Maybe it means you're awake."  He walks back in front of Kylo's face, and sits back down, leans in.  "Do you remember?"  
  
Kylo stays silent, not reaching out for his memories this time, only looking at Hux's face.  One of his eyes is covered with a black patch that matches his uniform.  He's missing his eyebrows and the lashes from his visible eye, and his head had been shaved.  Kylo feels an absurd pang, and an entirely inappropriate memory surfaces:  Hux's red hair between his fingers, so soft when his hand cradled the back of Hux's head and pulled him in for a punishing, stolen kiss. Hux pulling at Kylo's hair sharply in response.  Later, Hux between his legs, his tongue laving, his red head bobbing up and down as he swallowed the length of Kylo's dick, again and again.  The pale lashes fluttering as he looks briefly into Kylo's face.  His hands gripping Kylo's thighs, and waves of worshipful appreciation washing over Kylo.  Hux's feelings are unspoken, but Kylo drank his emotions in through the Force like a flower following the advance of the sun across the sky.  
  
But it's silly to mourn the loss of Hux's hair.  It will grow back.  But something bad must have happened if he's in bed like this and Hux doesn't have any hair.  
  
"You can't tell me if you do remember, of course."  Hux leans back, away from Kylo's face, and his features disappear into darkness again.  "We can't tell what you were doing on the surface of Starkiller before I found you.  But... you probably saw that... the Resistance managed to lower the shields, and blow up the base.  The thermal oscillator, actually, while it was armed.  So the planet... imploded."  
  
Kylo tries to wince in sympathy, but it doesn't feel like his face can move.  He wants to reach out for Hux, to hold his hand.  That would normally be wildly inappropriate, even with what they have between them, but something about that bad news, and the present situation, lends itself to it.  That base had meant everything to Hux, had been his life's work, and to have it destroyed, just like that... Hux must be devastated.  Worse, Hux might feel useless now, both to himself and the Supreme Leader.  That... wouldn't be good, for Hux.  
  
Hux pauses, and turns his head away from Kylo, looking elsewhere in the room, but Kylo can't see if there's anything else there.  "I came to get you.  Supreme Leader ordered us to evacuate, and ordered me to retrieve you and bring you to finish your training.  So I used your tracker to find you."    
  
Kylo, his thoughts coming more clearly, registers surprise and alarm at this.  If Starkiller was going, Hux would have likely preferred to go with it.  But why wouldn't the Supreme Leader have told Kylo to evacuate himself?  Kylo can't remember.  But he hopes, in a small corner of his mind, that the Supreme Leader had sent Hux after him on purpose.  Maybe he wanted Hux to develop another weapon, and wanted to make sure both of them were off-planet before it imploded.  Maybe Kylo had engineered the retrieval himself, knowing it was the only way to get Hux away safely.  
  
The more he thinks about it, the more surprised he is that Hux had come for him personally.  Hux was not sentimental.  It would have been more like him to send a team.  What had happened that had made him come himself?  Had the situation been that dire?  
  
"I found you.  You had been defeated.  Someone had... shot you, and you'd been badly wounded with a lightsaber.  Across your face."  Hux pauses another moment.  Kylo tries to remember the last time he fought someone who was armed with a lightsaber.  It had been a long time.  For all he knew, someone stole his lightsaber and beat him with it.  Or he did it to himself, hoping Hux would come for him and flee the planet.  
  
"When I was trying to carry you back to the shuttle... the surface of the planet was unstable.  A crack opened.  We fell.  I don't remember this part."  Hux sounds angrier.  "They say that you were trying to protect me.  From the burns."  
  
This is slightly more alarming.  What burns?  Kylo tries to reach out with the Force.  It would be easier if he could touch Hux, but his limbs still aren't working.  Had he been burned?  Had Hux been burned?  Is that what happened to his hair?  Was Hux all right?  
  
 _Hux_ , he manages, and Hux starts, leans forward again, studies him curiously.  
  
"You are awake.  And you can still use the Force."    Kylo can see Hux clench his jaw, relax it.  "I was afraid maybe you couldn't, or we wouldn't know.  They would..."  he swallows, and the fist in his lap clenches.  "They did a lot.  For you.  They did what they could, because the Supreme Leader said that your skill with the Force made it.  Necessary.  I was... worried," he pushes this out, more angrily, "that they might not help you.  If they thought.  You couldn't."  
  
Kylo can't process this.  Help him?  Why wouldn't they help him?  And why wouldn't he be able to use the Force?  
  
Hux pauses again, closes his eye.  Takes a breath in and out, then opens his eye again.  "Do you remember what happened?"  
  
 _Hux.  No._   _Are you hurt?_   He's weak, not sure if Hux is even hearing him.  
  
Hux blinks.  "I'm okay now.  We were both hurt very badly."  
  
 _Your hair._  
  
Hux snorts, and the corner of his mouth twitches up briefly.  "That would be the first thing you ask me about.  I'm told it will grow back."  He takes his hat off, sets it in his lap, and runs his gloved hand over his bare scalp.  "I was burned badly, but you... covered my right side.  They had to..."  He closes his eye, opens it.   Rests the fingertips of his left hand on the edge of the bed.  "I'm okay.  The left side of my head... I lost part of my jaw, the muscles and skin.  They had to add plating, carbon reinforcement."  He brings his right hand up and awkwardly pulls on the left side of his mouth.  Kylo can see several teeth that have been replaced with shiny metal replicas.  Which didn't make sense.  Why would Hux do that, rather than getting regular dental replacements?  And why hadn't he been fitted for a bionic eye?  
  
Kylo studies the left side of his face.  It's slightly asymmetrical, and he wonders if anyone but himself would notice.  Apparently they hadn't been able to regrow the bones.  Which didn't make sense.  Why wouldn't they have used bacta?  
  
 _Your eye,_ he tries, still unable to articulate himself well through the Force.  
  
"Yes.  That.  Well, they didn't have enough bacta for both of us on the _Finalizer_ , so I had the surgery.  I was under when they took us both to the Guil base.  They were waiting for me to heal more before giving me prosthetics, but the Resistance showed up, and we had to evacuate again.  Farther away.  We're on Nestine Prime in the Unknown Regions.  They don't have much in the way of medical technology here."  
  
This last was stated bitterly.  He pulls off his left glove and shows Kylo a prosthetic that looks more like a droid hand than a human appendage.  Hux twitches the fingers, and they move stiffly.  Kylo thinks of his uncle's prosthetic hand.  It had looked very much like a human hand, moved naturally, and had been the right size.  Hux's hand is too large, the joints are much larger than the narrow digits, and the finger lengths go all the way to the wrist.  There's no palm.  
  
"This is the best they can do.  I can't feel it, and it doesn't move right."  He leans forward again, pulls his right glove off with his teeth, and puts his hand next to Kylo's face, flat on the bed.  "But I'm okay."  He looks steadily at Kylo, his expression stoic, unchanging.  Hux had never been one to let his feelings show on his face.  Kylo can't feel them through the Force right now, either.  But he can tell this is bad.  
  
"Ren.  Kylo."  Hux's eye darts away, and he swallows.  Kylo has never seen him this out of sorts.  He only ever used Kylo's first name intimately.  Hux's eye moves back to Kylo's face.  "You're not okay."  Hux is beginning to turn red with the effort of suppressing some emotion.  He looks away, looks back.  "We're here, and we don't have a way to fix you.  They can't do it here.  They have to..."  He holds up his left hand.  "They have to do this for you.  They wanted to."  He puts his new hand down, below the level of the bed, where Kylo can't see it.  Hux's gaze follows it, then he looks back to Kylo.  "They wanted to put you in a protocol droid.  I wouldn't let them."  
  
A protocol droid?  Put him in a protocol droid?  That doesn't make sense.  What were they putting in the protocol droid?  
  
"And I didn't want you to wake up, like that, before I tried to talk to you about it.  Kylo, you saved me.  You were badly crushed, and burned.  They couldn't... they didn't think you would live, but the Supreme Leader ordered your life to be saved.  The bacta couldn't... couldn't regrow what wasn't there.  They tried."  
  
Kylo tries to close his eyes, and can't.  He sends his mind inwards and directs the Force through his body, trying to sense his body.  It's not there.  He can't feel himself, can't get a sense of himself.  Is it the Force, or his body?  Hux said there isn't anything there-  
  
The alarms start to go off again, more of them, louder this time.  He tries harder to reach out to Hux with the Force.  The Force comes to him, flows around him, but there is still something wrong.  Why can't he feel himself?  The Force is in all things, and why can't he feel himself?  
  
 _Hux.  Please.  I don't understand.  Touch me._  
  
Hux's face doesn't betray his emotion, but he sees a change in Hux's eye, a softening, and Kylo feels an immense sadness radiating from him.  Kylo hates it.    
  
"I can't."  Hux looks away again.  "They told me you won't be able to feel it."  
  
 _Kiss me.  Please.  Hux.  I don' t understand._  
  
Kylo is desperate.  He wouldn't normally ask.  He wouldn't normally need to.  Hux's eye shifts back to Kylo's face.  Far worse than anything Hux could have said or done, Kylo can see Hux's eye watering.  Hux leans forward, the corner of his eye leaking.  "I can't," he whispers.  Kylo should have been able to feel his breath against his cheek.  Can't.  "I can't, Kylo.  Your face.  It's-"    
  
Behind Hux, the door opens, and three doctors come in.  Hux pulls back, wiping his cheek with his right hand, still ungloved.  He reaches for his hat, turns back to Kylo.  He speaks louder as the doctors converge on Kylo.  
  
"Not there.  It's not there anymore."  
  
Kylo tries desperately to reach out for Hux's mind again.  Can't.  He panics.  Loses consciousness.  
  
***  
  
Kylo wakes up.  His vision is blurry.  At the thought, he hears a clicking noise, and his vision clears.  He tries to blink.  His vision blurs, then clears again, the clicking noise repeating itself.  He blinks a few more times, with the same effect.  His eyelids are see-through.  
  
He gathers his thoughts, still muddied.  The room is brightly lit, and he blinks a few more times, trying to remember where he is, why he's here.  Why his eyelids are translucent.  Is he awake?  Is he meditating?  
  
He sits up, which doesn't feel right.  He's bending... wrong.  He puts a hand to his stomach.  His hand doesn't move correctly, and he hears a clanking noise.  He looks down, and raises his hand to his face.  
  
It's a droid hand.  Two fingers and a shorter thumb.  The fingers are long, and segmented more than human fingers are.  He flexes one of them, and can't quite feel the joints move correctly.  He pinches his finger and thumb together, but can't feel them touch, can only see them, hear the click of the finger and thumb making contact.  
  
He tries to bend his neck to look down at himself, but instead his whole torso bends forward.  He's a droid, plated in black chrome, laying on some sort of plain work table.  He blinks a few times.  Is this Force meditation?  Had he sent his mind outside his body?  
  
He turns, and sees Hux sitting next to the table in his full uniform, hat and jacket included.  His arms are resting on the tabletop, and his head is pillowed on his right arm, face down.  
  
He swivels the droid head and appraises in the room.  Not the medical wing on the _Finalizer_ , or the facilities on Starkiller.  This is much simpler.  Maybe this is a vision, then?  A vision where a droid is with Hux, someplace else?  He hasn't had a vision like this before, where he felt like he could control someone, or something, that wasn't himself.  And why would Hux be sleeping next to a table with a droid on it?  
  
He looks down.  The legs are long, mounted to the side of the torso, jointed at the knee and end in four long toes, similar to the fingers on the droid hand.  This droid body has neither feet nor palms.  He swivels it, and finds it rotates at the waist on a strange joint.  It has another joint further up the chest, around where it feels like the arms are attached.    
  
He awkwardly tries to swivel and move the droid body off the other side of the table, away from Hux.  It feels more like a bed, maybe because he woke up laying on it, and he has the absurd thought that there aren't any sheets.  But he supposes a droid doesn't need them.  He puts the feet on the floor, the toes make clicking noises against the scuffed tile surface.  He leans forward and steadies himself, can feel some mechanism working inside the droid body to balance.  The knees bend, and the toes take the weight of the droid body, bowing and balancing the legs off the floor.  He takes a few tentative steps, the body making slight whirring noises, the toes clicking on the floor.  The feeling is strange, uncanny.  Like being present, but not.  
  
At the noise, Hux stirs and raises his head.  He's wearing a patch over his left eye.  He has the ghost of lashes on his visible right eye, a hit of copper eyebrows over both.  What Kylo can see of Hux's scalp is close-cropped, has been shaved recently.  
  
Kylo makes a noise when he remembers.  It comes out through a voice synthesizer.  Hux stands and walks over to him.  Kylo is much taller than Hux now, and a lot broader.  
  
Hux looks up at him dispassionately, his hands clasped behind his back.  He's standing very close, and Kylo can see over his head, can see how tightly he's clutching the wrist of his left hand.  "Do you remember when I spoke to you before?"  
  
Kylo looks down into Hux's face and despairs.  Hux had always been infuriatingly taciturn, it was one of the things that had initially drawn Kylo to him.  No matter what, Hux always had the same arrogant expression, emotion registering more in his eyes than his face.  It made Kylo mad, until he realized that Hux looked the same when arguing with Kylo as he did when discussing successful missions with other officers, or when stepping foot on what would become Starkiller base.  Kylo had wanted to see Hux with a different expression on his face, wanted to provoke an emotion in Hux that he wouldn't be able to stifle.    
  
In this, he didn't succeed very well.  Hux still looked vaguely angry when Kylo cornered him in the empty halls, the stolen moments in the conference room, and eventually, in more intimate situations.  It was maddening.  Kylo had tried everything.  One afternoon, while Hux was lying back and Kylo was fingering him, Kylo could feel the waves of arousal and pleasure washing through Hux, but his expression was still neutral, the activity only reddening his face.  Frustrated, Kylo had removed his fingers, then crawled up to crouch over Hux's face.  Hux had opened his eyes, given him the same neutral look.  Kylo looked down at him defiantly, expecting Hux to bend up, lick the length of his leaking dick, swallow him down.  Instead, with a perfectly straight face, Hux had grabbed Kylo's hips and begun tonguing his ass.  Kylo felt the press of Hux's nose into his perineum as Hux's tongue pushed boldly into Kylo.  Kylo had gasped, then collapsed forward on his hands as Hux's tongue pulled out and began working the rim of Kylo's hole.    
  
Kylo couldn't see Hux's face then, but he was sure it hadn't changed.  Kylo's certainly had.  It was one of the single most erotic things they'd ever done, his favorite memory of their time together.  He had needed to beg Hux to stop.  Then, he had crawled back down and entered Hux, and they had fucked sweetly, gently, Hux's hands running down Kylo's sweat-slicked back, his tongue and teeth licking and nipping gently at the pulse points on his neck.  Kylo closed his eyes, and felt the throbbing memory of Hux's tongue in his ass as he rocked into Hux again and again.  
  
His only consolation was that sometimes, very rarely, the corner of Hux's mouth would twitch up into a smile, and it always felt like a victory.  He liked to tease Hux when it happened, which only made him smile more.  
  
Hux isn't smiling now.  Neither is Kylo.  Kylo tries to move his face, and can't.  He raises his hand to it, and hears the ringing of metal on metal.  He tries to take a breath, but there's something wrong.  His stomach muscles, his mouth, his throat.  None of it is there.  He can't feel it.  
  
"I can't breathe."  
  
Hux looks down at his chest, then back up.  "You don't have lungs."  
  
Kylo tries to bend down and look at himself again.  The droid body can't bend at the neck, so it folds along the two torso joints.  The arms are long, with extra pistons at the shoulders and elbows.  
  
"The neck joint was too weak, I couldn't make it work.  I'm sorry."  
  
Kylo's eyes snap back to Hux.  An apology from Hux was almost as shocking as waking up as a droid.  Kylo is overcome enough that he doesn't absorb what Hux actually said.  
  
"You couldn't... what?"  
  
"I built..."  Hux gestures with his right hand, puts it back behind his back.  "I built it."  
  
Kylo tries to bite his lip, but nothing happens.  He laughs, for lack of anything else to do.  
  
"No lungs."  He puts the hand back up to his face, hears the clack, feels nothing.  "No face.  What do I have?"  
  
Hux cocks his head and inhales.  "Most of your head.  They saved everything but your jaw.  Your spine.  Your heart.  Parts of your circulatory system.  They... removed most of your other organs, because the synth organs worked better in the..."  Hux gestures again.  "system.  They needed your head.  And your heart, to pump the synthi-blood through.  But... the chemicals, and nutrition and things.  For the blood.  The things the other organs did.  They said.  You didn't need them anymore."  Hux looks away.  
  
Kylo reaches out and touches Hux's face with his hand.  Feels nothing.  Hux looks back up into his eyes.  
  
"You said they wanted to put me in a protocol droid."  
  
Hux looks away again, some anger registering in his eye.  His face turns red.  Kylo keeps the long droid fingers against it, the black chrome a contrast to Hux's pale cheek.    
  
"They didn't even have any here from the last twenty years.  They told me you were going to go in a LOM unit."  Hux's face flexes into a slight sneer at this, and Kylo drops his hand, somewhat shocked.  He's never seen Hux this angry.  He wonders if it's for him, or the thought of making use of such ancient tech.     
  
"I couldn't bear the thought of you... inside one of those things.  But they said it didn't matter.  The Supreme Leader said that, as long as you could move, and use the Force, the rest didn't matter."  He looks back at Kylo.  "I said it did.  I told the med staff that we would wait until I spoke to you, and I would personally oversee your... prosthetics."  
  
Kylo takes a step back.  "Prosthetics."  Kylo laughs again, puts his hands to his face.  They make a clacking sound.  He can't cover his eyes, or feel them.  "These aren't fucking prosthetics."  
  
"No."  Hux steps forward, still looking up at Kylo.  "But they're you.  Now."  
  
Kylo spins awkwardly around.  He can feel his balance upset, then something inside correcting it, forcing his limbs into position to right himself.  He wants to break something.  The stupid fucking droid body, for a start.  
  
"This isn't me.  I would have rather fucking died, Hux."  
  
"I know," he hears quietly, from behind him.  "So would I."  
  
It's a surprising enough admission to hear aloud from Hux that Kylo takes the few awkward steps to turn back.  Hux is still staring implacably at him.  "It would have been better if we'd died on Starkiller.  Especially after we fell.  I'm shocked they bothered to pull us off the planet."  
  
Kylo takes another step back.  "You still have a body, Hux.  A life.  I have...  I'm a droid," he blurts, for lack of anything else to say.  It still doesn't feel true.  Some part of him still doesn't believe he won't wake back up next to Hux, whole, all of this a bad dream.  
  
Hux nods.  "A cyborg.  They tell me I am too."  He holds up his left hand, pulls the glove off.  He still has the uncanny hand, it looks like it once belonged to a Hound unit.  "I don't really care."  
  
"It's easy for you not to care!"  He takes a step forward, but Hux doesn't move.  Kylo towers over him.  "You're still... you're still you."  
  
"Kylo."  His gaze softens in the way that makes Kylo's heart ache.  Kylo wishes it wasn't something he'd kept.    
  
Hux reaches for one of his hands with his whole right hand, and Kylo lets him take it, the pistons working awkwardly and limply to accommodate Hux's grip.  Hux shifts it to his own cybernetic hand, silver and more humanoid than Kylo's black chrome claw.  Kylo can't feel the grip.  He supposes Hux can't, either.    
  
"You're still you."  
  
"Don't fucking lie to me, Hux."  His emotions feel numb, but he knows they're still there, unlike his body.  Hux's attempts at... whatever he's trying to do are making this more real, are beginning to push Kylo into accepting that this is really happening, and he doesn't want it.  He's angry at Hux, for forcing it on him.  His eyes blur.  Apparently he can still tear up.  This upsets him more, because why couldn't they have fucking taken that with the rest of it.  Weak.  "I'm just a battle droid now.  Here to do the Supreme Leader's bidding."  
  
"Yes."  Hux tugs his hand and takes a step back.  Kylo steps forward, and Hux turns, leads him to the door.  "And I tried to make it better.  You can't do that for a protocol droid.  Come look."  
  
Kylo follows him out to a hallway.  "Where did you even learn to make droids?" he asks angrily, not liking the way it felt to walk.  The droid body bobs awkwardly on the long toes, and the inside was constantly in motion, a series of weights and counterbalances and incremental forced shifts of the limbs keeping him upright.  
  
"I had to take a lot of classes about it.  Introduction for the engineering students.  We had to build them ourselves.  I wasn't very good at it."  
  
"I can fucking tell."  
  
"No."  Hux looks over his shoulder briefly, then turns back around.  Kylo stares at the shorn back of his head, visible below the brim of his cap.  "I wasn't trying to make you look like a person.  I could, if you wanted.  But I made this body to be efficient at killing things.  I thought you would like that, if you had to be like this."  
  
"I liked that you made it." It comes out angry.  
  
Hux doesn't reply, instead leading him silently through a vacant hallway into a restroom.  
  
Kylo looks around.  "Why wasn't there a bathroom in the room?"  
  
Hux turns to look at him, frowning slightly.  "What do you mean?"  
  
Kylo thinks about the room.  "Why wasn't there a restroom in medical?"  
  
Hux turns away and pulls the droid arm harder.  "We weren't in medical.  That was a workshop.  They finished with the bioengineering parts a few days ago."  
  
Kylo deliberately looks away from the mirrors, not really wanting to face that right now.  His eye catches on the toilets instead, and something he doesn't want to know pushes urgently to the forefront of his thoughts.  He can't stop the words before they leave his mouth.  Or whatever it is he speaks with now.  
  
"I don't need this anymore, do I?"  It's bitter, although he's not sure if that comes across with the voice synthesizer he's fitted with.  
  
Hux glances at the stalls, still holding his hand.  "No, I suppose not.  They tell me you don't need to eat anymore.  So.  No."  
  
"No dick for my new body, then."  
  
He can feel a physical and mental tremor as Hux's robotic hand twitches in his.  The anger and sadness from Hux hits him through the Force, just as strong as his feelings did during sex.  It was rare that Hux _felt_ this strongly outside the bedroom.  Hux turns away.  
  
Kylo feels overloaded.  It's asking too much of him right now to accept... any of this.  All of this.  He feels like he might fall to his knees, except this body doesn't seem to be physically affected by emotion like his old one.  How convenient.    
  
He tries to think of something good, a good memory, and he closes his eyes.  The cloudy membrane shifts over them, and he remembers that he can't close his eyes.  That seems like just a little too much right now.  So instead, he turns and puts his fist through the cheap, poorly-constructed wall of the bathroom.  It goes through easily, satisfying, even as part of him has to acknowledge he doesn't really have a fist anymore.  There's no pain.  He's not sure if he likes that better or not, but he's too angry at the moment to weigh the pros and cons.    
  
He tries to take a deep breath to calm himself.  Can't.  Screams in frustration.  His voice synthesizer cuts out before it gets loud enough.  He pulls his hand from Hux's and puts both over his face again.  They don't block his vision completely, since he doesn't have palms or real fingers anymore.  
  
On the way to hitting the rock bottom of despair, his mind reaches for the memory he'd been looking for when he tried to close his eyes.    
  
The last time he'd had Hux.    
  
They had been in Hux's quarters on Starkiller, which they hadn't often used.  It had been slow.  They had time to enjoy each other, and that had been a precious thing.  He'd undressed Hux slowly, and Hux had complied, that arrogant expression unchanging as Kylo laid him down and kissed him gently, foregoing their normal frantic aggression in favor of really tasting Hux.    
  
Kylo had run his palm down Hux's side, and carded his fingers through his hair as his lips brushed the trail that led down Hux's belly.  He'd swallowed Hux while he was only half-hard, and Hux had moaned, Kylo glancing up to capture the flicker of expression in his eyes before Hux closed them and began to redden.  So pretty.   
  
Kylo had licked and sucked, taking Hux in and out a few times, lips slick and gentle on Hux's dick, then sucked hard and pulled off with a noise that made Hux tense.   Hux had opened his eyes and glanced down curiously as Kylo used both hands on Hux's hips to turn him over, face down, and guide him to the edge of the mattress.  He'd used his thumb to part Hux's ass, staring at the puckered flesh between.    
  
He thought of crouching over Hux's face, and he'd dropped his forehead to Hux's back, clenching his eyes shut as he let the memory of what Hux had done wash through him, forced the arousal to coil in his belly and make his cock throb.  He barely resisted the urge to reach down and stroke himself.  That would be selfish, and he wanted to give something to Hux right now.    
  
So he'd opened his eyes and drug his tongue from the top of Hux's ass, between his cheeks, stopping at his hole and pulling back.  He could feel Hux tense under his hands, and Hux's arousal hit him so hard he moaned deep in his throat.  He bent his neck and paused just above Hux's hole, blowing gently on it and making Hux tremble before he buried his nose in Hux's cheeks and tongued the hole properly, reverently.  Hux flexed his knees and moaned louder, and Kylo had laved him, slowly, gently, inside and out.  Hux bucked and squirmed under his hands, which held Hux steady.  He wished more than anything to see if Hux's iron hold on his face had failed him.  If this didn't do it, Kylo didn't believe anything would.    
  
When his aching, throbbing dick proved too much of a distraction to focus solely on Hux, he'd kissed the bottom of Hux's back and grabbed the lube.   He'd worked his fingers, slowly and gently, with Hux face down, until Hux was loose and flexing back frantically onto Kylo's fingers.  Hux never spoke during sex, but Ren sometimes felt connected enough that he could practically hear Hux begging for what he wanted.  Or, at least, Kylo liked to believe he could.  Just then, it felt like Hux was desperate for Kylo to be inside him.  Kylo needed it, too.  Panting and sweating, he'd buried himself slowly into Hux, savoring every particle of flesh that he could stuff into Hux.  Hux had gripped him, inside and out, with a feeling of desperate need that made Kylo feel like he belonged.  But this was not a feeling that he'd wanted to share with Hux, nor was it something that Hux wanted to hear.  
  
He almost wished he had said something, in that moment.  He wished Hux had been face-up, too, for that last time.  
  
"Kill me, Hux.  Please.  I don't know how to do it."  Kylo supposed he could tear open his own chest cavity and start pulling on things, but he isn't sure that would end his life.  The Supreme Leader probably knew him well enough to guard against that.  He probably had some sort of failsafe that would stop him from self-destructing, or an alarm that would make doctors rush in if he tried.  
  
So part of him is surprised when Hux assents, although he probably shouldn't be.  "We have to get away from here to do it.  They're watching both of us."  
  
There's more that Hux isn't saying.  Kylo can tell by the sound of his voice.  Kylo doesn't turn around, but he closes his eyes, or tries to, and they go cloudy again.  When the rage descends again, he yanks it and uses it for his purpose, harnesses it with the Force, pushes it outward and connects to Hux's mind.  Though it's unfair, he pushes his rage and confusion and the fact he's not really human anymore into Hux.    
  
And through the connection, he can feel Hux's despair, that Hux has given up, would have died on Starkiller if the Supreme Leader hadn't implied that Kylo needed his help.  That they both should have died on Starkiller, that Hux won't end his life and leave Kylo alone like this, that Hux would give anything to make Kylo whole again, including what's left of his life.  
  
"What's left of your life?"  Kylo asks, incredulous, intending it to be loud and angry, but the synthesizer mostly making it level.  "I don't even have one anymore.  I'm a machine.  I'm like the battle droids they used to fight wars with a hundred years ago!"  
  
"I know."  A pause.  "Look in the mirror."  
  
It's not going to get any worse, so Kylo turns around, awkwardly balanced again, his eyes skating past Hux and landing on the mirror.  
  
The head has been designed as a larger version of his helmet.  He can't see his eyes behind the visor, but Hux said they were still there.  
  
The black chrome body, scuffed and dented and patched-looking, doesn't have a neck, but it does have a cylindrical torso with a variety of sensors and compartments on it.  Kylo can see the sloppy welding joins on the pistons and tubes of the limbs. There are two strange joints at the top and bottom of the torso, rather than a waist and neck.  The torso is proportionately shorter than a human's, the arms and legs are overly long and narrow, spindly.  The limbs are in better shape than the body.  Aside from the sloppy welds, they have been polished to a reflective shine.  
  
Kylo stares at the droid body in the mirror, refusing to see it as himself.  A sense of unreality washes over him.  He tries to reach out and feel his shape with the Force, but he can only feel the phantom of his old body, and a strange sensation where his new limbs are.  The feel of having inorganic matter for a body is... unpleasant, when he tries to reconcile it as himself.  Twitching his own hands and watching the long droid fingers move in the mirror is not helping.  It only makes him feel less himself.  He grounds himself by looking at Hux in the mirror.  Hux has turned to stare at him, still impassive.  
  
"Your grandfather would be proud," Hux offers in a deadpan tone of voice.  
  
Kylo shifts his attention back to the droid body in consideration, putting one hand to the wall and leaning against it, watching the sensors flash, the pistons in the arm move.  
  
"He gave his body to save the life of my grandmother."  
  
Hux turns to the mirror to study Kylo's reflection.  "Well.  That's... unexpected."  
  
"Why?"  He turns to Hux, not wanting to face the mirror anymore.  "Because he was Sith?  Because he was more machine than man?"  
  
Hux cocks his head.  "I suppose so.  The legends about him don't do his humanity justice."  
  
Kylo tries to sigh before he remembers he can't anymore.  
  
"Did he?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Save your grandmother's life."  
  
Kylo doesn't think so.  He laughs, which sounds strange through the synthesizer, and maybe a little unhinged.  "No," he decides.  "He didn't save her life.  So it's good that I saved yours, like I succeeded where he failed.  I'm the better person.  Except I'm not a person anymore."  
  
The confession that he's happy to have saved Hux hangs in the air between them.  Kylo feels better for having said it, initially, but... it's awkward.  Neither of them are sentimental.  Such things remain unspoken between them.  Kylo suddenly isn't sure it was the right thing to say.  
  
Instead of replying, Hux takes Kylo's hand with his left one again and, to Kylo's surprise, bends over and kissed the back of his two fingers.  It was shockingly intimate, and completely unlike Hux.  
  
"I'll always regret that this happened to you."  Hux stays bent over his hand, his face hidden.  It's not something Hux would say, ever, though Kylo likes the sound of it even more than he liked admitting he was happy to have saved Hux's life.  Kylo wants to pull him close and kiss him, to feel the warm press of Hux's lips, and to close his eyes and breathe out and feel Hux's heart beat faster.    
  
Except he can't kiss him anymore, and he can't feel Hux's lips against his hand, or the tears he can see running down his long fingertips.  He would have given anything to feel them, to be able to run his thumb across Hux's cheek and wipe the dampness away.  Instead, his own tears, the only thing he kept, blur his own eyes.  
  
He yanks his hand from Hux and puts it through the mirror, going farther and burying most of his arm in the wall.  He gives Hux a moment to compose himself while he tries to blink the tears from his own eyes through those stupid clear membranes.  
  
"Good to see it seems to be a match for the strength tests you're giving it," Hux says levelly, after they are both silent for a moment.  
  
"You said it was better than a human body."  Kylo turns around, still awkward, grateful to have something else to talk about.  
  
"Yes.  Get your revenge with it."  
  
Kylo blinks, and tries to frown, tries to remember, and overflows with hot frustration when nothing works.  "What revenge?"  he asks, more sharply than he intends.  
  
Hux ignores the tone.  "The scavenger.  The traitor.  You went after the scavenger when she escaped.  The traitor came to help her.  What happened?"  
  
Kylo remembers them, but jumbled.  The traitor that had deserted from Hux's army.  The scavenger girl that had escaped after questioning.  She had been strong.  Something... something had happened after that.  
  
"What did they do?"  There's something important, and he tries to remember.  Something to do with the Force.  Supreme Leader had told him to do something, but he can't remember what it was.  Catch the scavenger girl and train her?  He hadn't done that, but there had been something else.  He felt like he had done the other thing. 

He's angry again until he reminds himself that he saved Hux.  Which he doesn't remember doing.  He wishes he could.  It feels like one of the only good things he's ever done.  
  
"The scavenger and the traitor defeated you in battle, presumably.  You had lightsaber wounds all over you.  Before."  
  
"From my lightsaber?"  
  
"Yours looked like it had been melted by another, but it's hard to tell with yours.  Maybe it just exploded."  
  
"It wasn't that bad."  
  
"It was."  
  
Kylo takes a shuffling step forward, feeling normal for a moment until he stumbles and feels the balance system compensating to keep him upright.    
  
"Did you keep it?"  He asks, angry again.  
  
Hux shakes his head, the same impassive look on his face.  "No.  I grabbed the pieces when I recovered you, but they were likely destroyed when... we had our accident.  Can you make another?"  
  
Kylo tries to clench his jaw, but he doesn't have a jaw, just the top part of it.  A stray thought wanders madly through his mind - does he still have his teeth?  Maybe he could give those to Hux, to replace the metal ones that sometimes catch the light when Hux speaks.  
  
He focuses again.  Lightsaber.  He would need another.  He thinks... but-  
  
"No.  Starkiller..." he trails off.  Hux blinks, and his face darkens imperceptibly, the subtle expression likely lost on anyone but Kylo, like the new asymmetry that Kylo can't stop staring at and feeling sorry about.  
  
They had used all the kyber crystals they could find in Starkiller base, to supplement the quintessence the primary weapon used, and for defensive plasma weapons.  They had stripped Ilum, Lothal, Turetal, Kessine, and any other source they had heard about of any and all kyber crystals.  They had used the galaxy's supply of crystals.  All of them were gone now, of course.  
  
But Hux had said Kylo sustained lightsaber injuries in the fight.  It was hard to imagine a situation where he would allow an opponent to take his weapon from him and defeat him with it without being mortally wounded.  He would have fought until they killed him or he won his weapon back.  Certainly there was... something.  Something he couldn't remember.  
  
Kylo tries to remember again, but senses something else instead.  The only thing that's made him feel hopeful so far in what he should probably consider as his new life.  
  
"Luke's lightsaber."  
  
"Luke?"  Hux sounds puzzled.  
  
"Luke Skywalker."  
  
"Yes." 

He focuses on Hux again, harnesses the hope that the thought of the new lightsaber brings.  He uses the Force to touch Hux, envelop him.  He sinks himself into the sensation of Hux's body.  He doesn't enter Hux's mind, isn't sure he wants Hux to know how he's greedily drinking in the warmth of his skin, his pulse, the slight flex of his muscles as he blinks and talks, things that Kylo can't have anymore.    
  
Hux is trying to speak, and Kylo gets annoyed at the distraction of listening to him.  He loses his concentration, and the contact between them breaks.  They're talking about his uncle, of course.  Thoughts of Luke Skywalker reliably set him off in the past.  He should be relieved that some things remain the same.  
  
"You were looking for him."  
  
"I'll find him."  
  
"We still don't have the map."  
  
"It's all I have left now.  It's what you made me for."  
  
"I didn't make this body for Luke Skywalker.  I made it for revenge.  Mine and yours."

Kylo feels Hux's rage, unlooked-for, wash over him.  Rage at their defeat, at having to do this at all, at what lies ahead for both of them.  The rage is enough to fuel Hux, for the moment.  Kylo is bolstered by the thought that this is something he can do for Hux.  But still.  The lightsaber.  
  
Kylo steps back and turns around.  "The Supreme Leader made sure I lived.  He wants Luke Skywaker dead.  That's the only reason."  
  
"I suppose that's true."  
  
"I'll take his lightsaber.  And kill him with it."  
  
"And then our revenge?"  
  
Kylo spins back around, less awkward.  "Revenge."  For himself, and for Hux, who had finished his base and hadn't been allowed to die in it with Kylo.  
  
"After.  Can I.  Have.  Regular prosthetics."  He almost doesn't ask.  He knows.  He can feel the droid body slumping forward sightly with the weight of the question, and its inevitable answer.  
  
Hux remains impassive.  "We need to gather resources.  The First Order was hit hard after... after the main base was destroyed.  We have very little of anything to spare right now."    
  
Hux doesn't say it outright.  The kind of human prostheses that Kylo wants, the ones that look and feel like human limbs, are expensive.  To fit Kylo with them would likely cost as much as a new base, and they would probably have to risk going into Republic territory to do it.  They would have to be well-off indeed to afford it.  And if the Supreme Leader wanted to dump him into a protocol droid and send him after Luke Skywalker, his desires obviously weren't a priority.  
  
"I would give you my other arm to make you feel better."  
  
"You can't."  He steps forward.  "Let me see your eye."  
  
Hux blinks.  Smiles a fake smile, so Kylo can see his metal teeth.  "There's nothing there."  
  
"Turns out we have that in common."  Kylo reaches up, but rather than grabbing Hux's eyepatch, he stabs Hux in the cheek with one of the droid fingers.  To Hux's credit, he doesn't wince or blink, only reaches up with his right hand and pulls the patch away, revealing flesh that ends in a perfect, empty eye socket.  
  
"You don't even have one made of glass."  
  
"They didn't have any handy.  Not even here."  
  
"Do you want one?"  
  
"Not particularly."  He covers his eye again, gives Kylo the fake smile with the bad dental work again.  
  
"Can I give you my teeth?"  He asks before he can reconsider the words falling from his lack of mouth.  
  
"Keep them.  Please.  You have so little left."  
  
"I have no use for them anymore."  
  
"I prefer them in your mouth.  Really."  
  
"I don't have a mouth."  
  
"No.  You don't."  
  
Kylo reaches up with the droid hand and manages to take hold of Hux's hat.  He pulls it from his head, revealing Hux's pale scalp, covered with prickles of orange hair.  He drops the hat on the floor.  Mistreating his uniform would have reliably set Hux off in the past.  It's troubling to see how little Hux cares now.  
  
"Is it hard to get dressed with your new hand?"  
  
"Yes.  I can't really use it for that, we don't have fine motor technology here.  Still, I'll get used to it."  
  
"I don't have to wear clothes anymore."  
  
The corner of Hux's mouth quirks up.  "We can get you a cloak, if it would make you feel better."  
  
"No.  That wouldn't make me feel better."  
  
Unable to stop himself, he sends a ripple of the Force over Hux's scalp, caresses his cheek with it.  Hux leans into the touch, closes his eye.  Kylo grips his shoulder and wraps his arm around his back.  
  
"I'm sorry."  He wants to sob, but the words came out sounding the same as everything else.  
  
"Don't."  
  
"I love you."  
  
Hux sighs.  "We'd both be better off if you didn't."  
  
"We'd both be dead."  
  
"Perhaps."  
  
Kylo hears a click, assumes Hux has grabbed him with his metal arm.  He checks with the Force.  He finds Hux's organic arm easier, which is wrapped around his waist.    
  
Kylo is still sorry, and angry.  He gathers the emotions and plunges back into Hux's mind, where Hux loves him, too, and Hux remembers him whole.  He closes the blurry membranes over his eyes and thinks about living in Hux's mind and about the revenge, and about what he and Hux can't have anymore.  Hux is thinking about it, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after reading General Grievous's story. There are many horrifying things about Qymaen jai Sheelal, who arguably has one of the saddest backstories in Star Wars. But he does consent to his cyborg body.
> 
> _He was_ shot _by Obi-Wan Kenobi._
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr [@vadianna](http://vadianna.tumblr.com) for more General Grievous feels. Or kylux. Whatever.


End file.
